19 
oj Edinburgh^ Session 1862-63. 
n 80 um,” proved a failure. An analogous influence is found in the 
vast expansion of intellectual intercourse through the means of 
the press, and in the filtering of knowledge of all kinds — of scien- 
tific knowledge, perhaps, especially — through the widely extended 
system of popular lectures. In these two features of the age, we 
find sufficient reasons alone to account for much of the social 
change to which I have referred. Newspapers, magazines, and 
ephemeral literature of every kind, supplant the oral intercom- 
munication characteristic of the days of clubs. A man takes 
home with him to his fireside the gossip, the jokes, the discoveries, 
the discussions, grave or gay, of the day. And in matters of 
science it is somewhat the same. Much he finds of all that is most 
occupying the thoughts of able men pursuing natural knowledge 
set down in the pages of the “ Atheiiceum, ” or Macmillan,” or 
‘‘ Grood Words,” perhaps by the very persons who really are most 
able to speak of such things. Nothing of importance can be com- 
municated to a society which does not soon become matter of public 
notoriety through such channels. 
But still wider is the influence of those popular discourses or 
lectures which now practically supply to many persons of general 
information, but not professed students, the intellectual interest 
formerly sought in' the meetings of our learned Societies, and I 
believe I might add, in the case of Edinburgh, in some measure 
from our University courses also. The Eoyal Institution of Lon- 
don commenced this system with splendid advantages, and its 
popularity (which could scarcely increase) has been maintained 
with little if any diminution for sixty years. But in fulfilling 
its own task of instructing intelligent persons in the latest results 
of scientific discovery, often from the very mouths of the discoverers 
themselves, it has deprived of one great attraction the meetings 
of the Koyal Society, the great fountain and source whence such 
knowledge ought naturally to flow. Similar influences have pre- 
vailed in Edinburgh, to the diminution of the attendance in this 
place. Those who can look back to the audiences assembled in 
this room when ordinary scientific papers were read, from twenty- 
five to thirty years ago, will corroborate my testimony as to the 
change which less than even one generation has brought about. 
The social spirit of coming together for common objects, self-im- 
